Quintessence of Dust

by KUBOA

When Milton Ball was seven, his father sat him on his lap and told him he was a mistake. The word was a six-inch nail resting on his heart. The hammer that drove it in was the reason. Milton’s father produced a small fire match from his pocket and placed it in a plastic sandwich bag. With the match still clamped between his fingers, he began shaking the bag up and down until it fell off.

  “I suffer from what most people refer to as a pencil dick, son,” said Milton’s father. “More than likely, you’ll suffer from the same condition when older.”

  Unscrewing the cap from a bottle of Wild turkey, he went on to say, “To stop some girl’s uterus holding more condoms than a Durex dispenser, my advice would be to invest in a lot of elastic bands.”

  He filled a tumbler three fingers high, took a hit.

  “I shouldn’t worry too much though; you’re so damn ugly you’ll probably remain a virgin for the rest of your life.”

  Milton’s father died two weeks later of an embolism. He bent down to pick up a bottle of Remy Martin and never got up. Milton found his father an hour later, face half blackened due to the blood settling. He kicked the body twice to make sure he was dead: once in the arm, the second in the head. Milton then prised the bottle of brandy from his father’s hand, took a swig, poured the rest over his father’s crotch, struck the same match he used to illustrate his hereditary lack of girth, and threw it on the body. When the firefighter arrived, Milton sat unperturbed on the staircase in the hallway. Feral waves of yellow and red flames crawled up the walls around him, and the only thing Milton yelled to the fireman was, “I’m a big mistake! I’m a big mistake with a pencil dick!”

  The fireman who hoisted him up and onto his shoulder never heard a word, nor did he hear Milton cry out when, during the rush to get him out of the burning house, he banged his head on the doorframe.

  Fifteen years later and Milton Ball can still feel the lump on his head, and every time he does, he is reminded of how ugly he is, and how wonderful a burning house looks at dawn.

  Hector Bingleton is examining the head lump while in Milton’s living room. Hector Bingleton is a fourth year medical student who lacks the bedside manner and discipline of his peers, but fortunately for Milton, he is self-important, cheap and lives next door.

  “You say it happened when?” asks Hector.

  Milton clears his throat, and says, “When I was seven.”

  Hector refers to one of five medical reference manuals he brought from his home. Scanning the page of Signs, Symptoms, and Diagnoses, he says, “And you say you’ve been having dizzy spells for how long?”

  “On and off, five years.”

  Hector flicks a few pages and says, “Could be glue ear, but my best guess is it’s BPPV.”

  “BPPV? Sounds bad,” says Milton.

  Hector looks up from his book and says, “It’s four letters, and the first one stands for benign. There’s no need to start writing out your will just yet.”

  Hector is overweight, bordering on obese, which means his face finds it hard to articulate emotion. The raise of an eyebrow or curl of lip that would normally reassure a person a remark was made in jest is almost impossible when your face weighs ten pounds. For this reason, Milton is unsure if he should be worried or not.

  Changing the subject, Milton says, “The local kids, they’ve started calling me Gutterball.”

  Hector returns to his book.

  “It’s because I’m always drifting into the road, because of the dizziness. And my last name is Ball.”

  “You know what people call me?” Hector says thumbing a few pages. “Constipated, because I don’t give a shit.”

  Milton laughs a little.

  “Listen,” says Hector slamming the reference book shut. “This knock to your head, the one you had when you were seven, it’s caused fragments of calcium carbonate crystals called otoconia to break off within the semicircular canals of the inner ear near the cochlea. You don’t need me to draw you out a diagram, do you?”

  Hector doesn’t wait for a response.

  “The canals hold a system of narrow fluid-filled channels called the labyrinth, all of which sense movement of the head and help control balance and posture. On occasion, such as an inner ear infection, or head trauma like the one you had, one of these fragments can get into one of the semicircular canals, usually the posterior canal. It’s probably been sat there for years, wedged in the labyrinth, which is why it wasn’t apparent straight away. You said you’ve been suffering dizzy spells for how long?”

  “About five years.”

  “Five years ago you must have knocked your head, dislodging the otoconia. Whenever your head moves in certain directions, like bending down, or even turning too quickly, this tiny little fucker bombards messages down the vestibular nerve, confusing the brain that results in a sense of vertigo. That, my ugly little friend, is why you have Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, and it’s why I’m going to get a fucking honours degree next year. High five!”

  Hector holds aloft a hand the size of a snow shovel. To not cause affront, Milton slaps it.

  “Do I need to have an operation?”

  “Aside from the face lift? No. There’s a simple cure called the Epley Manoeuvre.”

  “Is it painful?”

  “It’s just a series of head movements that helps move the otoconia from where it is back into the vestibule.” Hector misses a beat before saying, “Even your mother must have found it hard loving a face like that, right?”

  Milton looks to the floor and through hesitant breath says, “She never got the time.”